Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

Faking AIDS — Perhaps the worst possible pick-up line has to be 'I've got AIDS!' Especially if you don't actually have AIDS. Yet apparently many young men in Malawi are boasting that they have the disease, even though they're uninfected. They think having AIDS is a sign of sexual prowess. Kind of sad, really. I was especially interested in this story because my sister has been living in Malawi for the past year, helping design an AIDS education program there. I'm planning to visit her there next year, if I can scrape together the money for the outrageously expensive airfare. This year I chose Loch Ness over Malawi (I'll be searching for Nessie in September).

Haunted Rubber Ducky — I've said it before and I'll say it again: supernatural possession is the ultimate way to add value to anything you want to sell on eBay. Just claim that it's haunted, then sit back and watch the bids roll in. The latest spirit-plagued item up for sale is a haunted rubber ducky. It supposedly attacked the seller's son in the bathtub. The price is already up to $41.50, and there's only one day left to become the new owner of this spooky curiosity... if you dare.

Swedish Anti-Smoking Campaign — The Swedish anti-smoking activist group A Non Smoking Generation has plastered posters all over Stockholm that make claims such as 'smoking stunts penis growth,' 'cigarette filters are filled with mouse excrement,' and 'second-hand smoke kills birds.' The problem is that none of these claims are acually true. But the group figures that the outrageousness of the claims might entice a few people to visit their website to learn the real facts. This once again demonstrates one of the central principles upon which the advertising industry was founded: if you can't get their attention by telling the truth, then get it by telling a lie.

International Jewish Conspiracy — All true conspiracy wackos know that there's an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world, but they may not have realized that this conspiracy has its own website, appropriately called InternationalJewishConspiracy.com. The site offers the lowdown on all aspects of the Jewish conspiracy, such as a refresher on secret Jewish signs as well as a list of some of the lesser known protocols of the Elders of Zion. Obviously the site is a spoof, and pretty funny. But still, I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be wearing one of the 'International Jewish Conspiracy' t-shirts they sell. I'd worry that people wouldn't recognize it as a joke. (Thanks to Jim Terr for the submission)

Misleading URLs — Jim Terr submitted this hoax website of his own creation: willingchicks.com. It offers "world-class companionship — If you can afford it!" It belongs in the genre of sites with misleading URLs, in the same vein as nice-tits.org and supermodelswithseethroughtops.com (all very safe for work). Misleading URLs are similar to Unfortunate URLs, the difference being that the former are intentional whereas the latter aren't.

Baldwinization — Dr. Clive Boddicker is a plastic surgeon who's discovered the secret of true happiness. Happiness is looking like one of the Baldwin brothers. And his Baldwinization procedure makes this possible. It "results in the patient's perfect resemblance of the Baldwin brother of their choice." For top dollar you can get 'The Alec.' But if you're on a tight budget you might have to settle for 'The Daniel.' Both men and women can undergo the Baldwinization procedure. (via New Yorkish)

Catwoman Beneath the Costume — I like Halle Berry, but I don't have any plans to see Catwoman (it just doesn't look that interesting). And anyway, turns out it isn't even Halle in that costume. It's some guy called Nito Larioza wearing red lipstick. Maybe Nito is also Mr. Six! You never know.

Blood Food — MosNews reports that researchers at the Voronezh State Technological Academy have perfected "a method for processing blood and turning it into food products such as milk, yogurt, chocolate, and coffee." Yum. Nothing like a cup of fresh-brewed blood coffee to start the morning right. You know it's just a matter of time now before we're all living on freeze-dried packets of this stuff while Charlton Heston runs around screaming 'Soylent Green is People!'

Killer Phone Calls — Here's a new penis-melting-zionist-robot-comb-type rumor that's spreading through Africa. Agence France Presse is reporting that many mobile-phone users in Nigeria are terrified that if they receive a phone call from one of two numbers, either 0802 311 1999 or 0802 222 5999, it will cause them instant death. A spokesman for the Nigerian mobile-phone company is trying to squash the rumor by assuring people that, "from an engineering point of view, it is absolutely impracticable, and there is no such record whatsoever anywhere in the world, that anyone has died or can die from merely receiving or making a phone call." The AFP reporter braved death and actually called both numbers but was unable to get through to anyone. Personally I think these Nigerians simply don't have the full story. They should know that the phone calls will only kill you if you receive them directly after watching a videotape of a creepy-looking long-haired girl crawling out of a well.

Update: Gizmodo has a copy of a top-secret internal memo from Nokia in which the company admits that it's phones really can cause instant death when calls from certain numbers are received. (yeah, I know it's a joke).

Blairwitching and the Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan — Five years ago the Blair Witch Project became a multi-million dollar box-office sensation thanks to a clever marketing scheme that pretended the Blair Witch was real (and offered a spooky companion website filled with pseudo historical background about her). Ever since then movie marketers have latched onto the concept of promoting movies via hoaxes. So much so, that I think we should just begin referring to the practice of promoting movies by hoaxing the public as 'Blairwitching'. For instance, a sample sentence using this term might be: Failing to think of any original way to promote their movie, the marketing team simply decided to Blairwitch it.

The latest movie to be Blairwitched is the Sci-Fi Channel's documentary about filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan (The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan) that aired last night. The Sci-Fi Channel's marketing team promoted the movie by promising that it was going to reveal a secret buried in Shyamalan's past, a secret that had driven him towards his obsession with the supernatural. Supposedly Shyamalan didn't want this secret exposed, which caused him to stop cooperating with the documentary team. This conflict between Shyamalan and his biographers managed to garner a fair bit of press. But then yesterday, when the documentary aired, the Sci-Fi Channel admitted that they simply invented Shymalan's buried secret as well as Shyamalan's disagreement with them (the big secret was supposed to be that he once witnessed a drowning).

I like the line in this article about the hoax campaign where NBC executives (NBC owns the Sci-Fi Channel) apologize, saying that "We would never intend to offend the public or the press and value our relationship with both." Yeah, right. Meanwhile, they're happy to accept all the publicity that the hoax generated (including having people like me write about it on their weblogs). And oh yeah, the hoax itself and the documentary were ultimately all big advertisements for Shyamalan's upcoming movie The Village, which actually looks kind of cool. (Thanks to Terry in the hoax forum for giving a heads up about this)

Extreme Sport: Meat-Hook Dangling — Kids nowadays! What will they think of next? Reuters is reporting that a popular new pasttime amongst youngsters in the Florida Keys is to dangle themselves from meat hooks attached to bamboo tripods set up at the beach, and then just hang out that way for a while. Apparently the Coast Guard found "a young woman, her feet brushing the surface of the shallow water, dangled from the frame, hooks embedded firmly in her shoulders." I don't know. I thought I had come across some pretty strange things in my time, but meat-hook dangling definitely took me by surprise. But then, when I was over the initial shock, I immediately thought of the sport of Monkey Fishing, which Slate.com wrote about back in 1996. Monkey Fishing (which also, according to Slate, was popular down in the Florida Keys) involves rowing up to the island of Lois Key which contains a population of wild monkeys, attaching a piece of fruit to a fishing line, throwing the fruit to the monkeys, waiting until the monkeys impale themselves on the hook when they try to eat the fruit, and then yanking the poor animals into the water. Monkey Fishing, of course, turned out to be a hoax which Slate was taken in by. So could meat-hook dangling be the new monkey fishing? Reuters says that the Coast Guard vouches for the reality of meat-hook dangling, but I'd like to see some pictures and get a little more proof before I totally accept this story.

Be A Celeb — Fake blogs are a growing trend on the web. Just recently we saw Plain Layne exposed as Odin Soli. But now, with the advent of an online role-playing game called Be A Celeb, the fake-blog phenomenon seems to be rising to a whole new level. The goal of Be A Celeb is to create a convincing fake celebrity blog. You can choose to be whatever celebrity you like, as long as someone else hasn't already taken the celebrity. Celebrities already in play include Clay Aiken, Jessica Biel, and Kirsten Dunst. Once you've created your fake celebrity, you can then make them interact with other fake celebrities... kind of like a strange alternative reality Hollywood, or LiveJournal Celebrity Sims.
An article about this game has been posted on morons.org. I'm wondering if they'd let me play either Plain Layne or Kaycee Nicole Swenson as a character... though they'd probably say they don't qualify as 'celebrities.'... or what would happen if a real celebrity began playing themselves as a fake celebrity? The mind boggles.

Chicken Foot — David Emery reports on this gross-out case from Durham, North Carolina. A family bought a package of chicken tenders from the store, took it home, and discovered what appeared to be the foot of a human baby tossed in with the chicken pieces. "It's breaded, and it's already cooked," police Sgt. Maurice Hayes said. Happily, the foot turned out to be a piece of dough molded into the shape of a foot.

Terror in the Skies — A story published on the Women Wall Street website about a possible new terrorist threat has been setting the blosophere abuzz. The story, written by Annie Jacobsen, describes her experiences on a four-hour plane ride during which a group of 14 Syrian men began to act suspiciously (in her eyes), whispering to each other and making frequent trips to the bathroom. After the plane landed, Jacobsen did some investigating and learned that authorities are worried about gangs of terrorists separately carrying aboard the parts needed to make a bomb, and then assembling the bombs onboard in the bathroom. However, the Syrians on Jacobsen's flight were apparently just a group of musicians. A lot of people are suspicious of Jacobsen's story... not that she necessarily invented it, but that she exaggerated it. Some details seem a bit unlikely. For instance, the stewardesses on her flight seem awfully willing to divulge passenger information as well as the location of federal air marshals. I guess people are suspicious because no one ever heard of Annie Jacobsen before this, and Women Wall Street is an odd place for an article like this to appear. But preliminary research by Michelle Malkin seems to indicate that the story is basically true. Though this doesn't mean that Jacobsen wasn't being a bit paranoid. Would it really require 14 terrorists to assemble one bomb?

Some Terror and War Related Hoaxes — While I was away in Virginia I got behind on posting and didn't note some terror/war related hoaxes occurring in the news. So for the sake of completeness, here's a quick rundown of these stories.

• First we had Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, a soldier in Iraq suspected of faking his own abduction (tip: if you're going to fake your abduction, don't call your family on your cellphone while you're supposed to be abducted).


• Then there was the bizarre case of American soldier-of-fortune types in Afghanistan who set up a fake prison in order to interrogate people they grabbed off the street whom they thought might be al-qaeda members. Instead of going all the way to Afghanistan, these guys should have simply stayed in America and attended the Abu Ghraib Prison Fantasy Camp.


• Finally, France has been shocked by the case of a woman (known in the media only as 'Marie') who reported that she was attacked on a train by a gang of Arab youths who thought she was Jewish. Marie later confessed that her report was a hoax.

The Plucking Rainbow Orgy — Viewers of British tv might remember Rainbow, a children's show starring the puppet characters Bungle, Zippy, and George, and hosted by Geoffrey Hayes. Recently a movie has been circulating around the web (you can also see it here) purporting to show an episode of Rainbow that's heavily, heavily laced with sexual innuendo. Way too much innuendo to possibly be accidental. It's been dubbed the 'Rainbow Plucking Orgy' tape. It's very funny, but is it real? Was it ever really broadcast? According to the Planet Gromit site, the tape is real, but it never aired. It was created as a joke and was not meant to see the light of day. I have no idea how it's surfaced now.

Who is Mr. Six? — This question comes from the hoax forum, where it's sparked quite a debate: what's the deal with that guy in the Six Flags ads? You know the one. The 'old dude' who looks like he's about 90-years-old but dances around maniacally like a 19-year-old. Is he really an old man? Or is he a young professional dancer dressed up as an old man? If you're not familiar with 'Mr. Six', then you can check out the commercials starring him at Six Flags' website. Apparently Six Flags is being swamped by requests to reveal the true identity of Mr. Six, but so far they're staying mum, evidently hoping to milk the interest in him for all it's worth. So here's a poll so that the public can vote on who they think Mr. Six really is:

Big Corn — Jim sent in this picture of his grandfather posing with an ear of corn, along with this explanation: "My grandfather, Frank Weed, who died in 1949, worked on the railroad for years. He bragged to the other men about how big the Iowa corn was but they wouldn’t believe it. So my father took a picture of him, and of an ear of corn, then cut the negative, pasted the other into the hole and printed it. After that, the criticism of my grandfather’s exaggerations were silenced!" Thanks, Jim!

Viagraholics Anonymous — Sex addiction can be real enough, but Viagraholics Anonymous, a site dedicated to helping men who are addicted to Viagra, seems a bit tongue-in-cheek. For instance, take this testimony from Ben, a recovering Viagraholic: "I turned to the Internet and ordered more Viagra online, from two or three sites at a time, to maintain my supply. The days that followed are just a blur. Mornings I'd wake up on the couch, my pants around my ankles with another damned erection, then take a cold shower and stagger into work. I'd be walking around with an obvious erection in my pants, unaware that people were laughing at me behind my back." Ben's problem sounds a little like something out of a Clive Barker story. (via J-Walk)

Worst Named Bus — About a week ago I posted a picture of a 'Big Hairy Fanny' bus that supposedly operates in Finland. I suspected the picture was a fake, and it turns out that my suspicion was correct. Quite a few people commented that they had seen other pictures of the same bus with the name 'Fücker' painted on the side, and today Iain Cartmill sent me a picture of this bus. A quick google search turned up lots of other images of it, as well as the website of the Fücker travel company, based in Germany (click on the 'Die Busflotte' button to see pictures of the bus in question). So the Fücker Bus is real, but the Big Hairy Fanny Bus is fake. The mystery is why anyone photoshopped the picture to read 'Big Hairy Fanny,' since the actual name is funnier than the hoax name.